He was now almost directly over the location of the cannon emplacement. The new flight plan called for two passes, one at forty thousand feet to survey the countryside and, if he could manage it safely, a second lower pass over the impact area for closeups. The altitude was left up to him. Teleman looked pained — that was their polite way of telling him to get right down on the deck if he could. To make the fastest possible approach with the least amount of time over the target area, he resumed manual control and fell off fifty miles to the east. He would make a quick pass straight down the valley and pull up hard to eighty, thousand feet. The pass should carry him over both the cannon site and the impact site with less than one full minute spent below sixty thousand feet. The second pass he would worry about later.
Teleman made the first run across the target in a straight pass while all of his surveillance equipment — infrared, ultraviolet, topographical laser, and telephoto visual light — ground away. There was little activity on the ground, with the exception of two Red Chinese Mig-21 patrol crafts rising from the vicinity of Ala-Kul to the north. He had nothing to fear from the Chinese interceptors even if he came within visual sighting distance. His speed was more than a match for any armament they carried. The ground control map flew across the screen, a green streak acting as the pointer to the first of the locations.
The sensors picked out the exact location of the 210-mm gun from the satellite coordinates and displayed the area beneath on the scope. The gun emplacement was covered with camouflage netting and he shifted to the IR panel. On the scope he thought he could pick out several trenches and some activity close to the gun itself. Then he was away and past, hoping that all of the sensors combined had been able to pick out a coherent picture. The laser panel was signaling for attention and he switched it up. The laser had spotted a diffuse cloud on the order, of two hundred parts per million some thirty miles east. Quickly he reran the instructions from AR-7 until they matched the location.
When the shell from the gun had exploded it had released a cloud. Of what, AR-4 was not equipped to tell. But it was still there after twenty minutes, and spreading slowly, apparently on the prevailing wind. The laser indicated particulate matter as the main composition of the cloud — thin droplets of liquid. That pretty well ruled out an atomic shell, he thought, even if it had failed to explode properly. Teleman paused for a moment, then deciding, he boosted power to the turbofans and swung the wings forward a few degrees and headed quickly for the deck. At a little less than Mach 1 he bore westward toward the cloud, flying up the valley and losing altitude as fast as he could shed it. “Gas?” he wondered aloud. If the Chinese were using gas, the Soviets might not be so reluctant to initiate a nuclear conflict. In this godforsaken area it could be done fairly safely, that is if they could limit the exchange to the war area and not extend it to each other’s cities. The Soviets might be trusted to do that, but not the Chinese. They would have to escalate if they were to remain effective. The valley seemed outwardly calm in the early morning sunlight that was beginning to touch the snow-covered slopes. But he knew that the snow and convolutions of the land hid masses of troops and weaponry. He knew that the radar operators on both sides of the border must be wondering about the peculiar blank spots in their radar that kept recurring over the war area and along the lengthy border. He was sure that conferences were being held by phone between the radar sites and headquarters areas to decide whether to scramble investigating fighter aircraft. Teleman was reckoning that he would have less than ten minutes more before the first aircraft appeared. It would be dangerous to the project, but probably not fatal to him if he was spotted visually. The A-17 could outclimb and outrun anything either side could throw against him.
As Teleman neared the open plain where the shell had impacted and scattered its mysterious cloud, the lasers indicated that it had spread to cover an area at least twenty miles square. The single shell fired had exploded over the western crest of the last ridge separating the valley from the plains, and the prevailing westerly winds had swept it down and across the plain. Teleman warmed up the Terrain Avoidance Radar for the second pass and settled into the northern end of the wide, bowl-shaped plain for samples. The wing scoop covers slid open and he throttled back until the wings were fully extended and he was flying at less than five hundred miles an hour. He completed a first pass at five hundred feet and saw nothing visually although the flickering display from the monitoring consoles assured him that the sensors were faithfully recording every blade of grass and tree leaf for later analysis.
He swung up in a tight turn over the southern end, dipped the port wing, and lost altitude until he was down on the deck at little over two hundred feet and lumbering along at 140 knots. He turned into a lazy zigzag pattern and put all of the sensors to work and the aircraft on automatic pilot. Teleman rubbed his face and sighed, then picked up the binoculars to search the snow-covered meadows and hillsides beneath while the aircraft went into the rolling jolting pattern calculated by the TAR to maintain an even two-hundred-foot altitude over the undulating land below.
There was plenty of evidence of past battles on the ground: numerous shell holes, trenches, shattered tanks and personnel carriers, and long stretches of churned mud left by maneuvering vehicles. A fierce battle must have swept through the area only yesterday, as several of the destroyed vehicles were still sending up thin columns of smoke from fire-blackened hulks. The snowfall of the preceding night had spread a thin layer of white over the battle area, but it had not been heavy enough to cover all traces. The overcast sky and the banked, heavy blue clouds to the east suggested another snowfall and fierce winds in a matter of hours, and he thanked the weather control satellite system that had provided the data that had brought him to the battle area before the new snowfall began.
Then, off to the right, at the base of a gentle slope, well hidden by a thicket of aspen, he caught a flicker of movement. Cutting out the autopilot, Teleman continued the zag around until he could make a straight pass. The ungainly 120-foot A-17 pivoted delicately and!loped across the plain.
Watching the scope now rather than looking through the glasses, he could see a vehicle resembling a jeep jerk out of a stand of aspen and head erratically into the meadow. As he watched, the jeep struck a patch of thick, churned — mud and bounced to a stop, thoroughly mired. The driver struggled to get out, then collapsed backward across the seat. From the padded uniform and hat, he was obviously Chinese. Teleman cut in the autopilot again and checked the valley floor to the west with the binoculars while the aircraft resumed its interrupted search pattern. He had now been down in the valley at two hundred feet for a minute and a half. Safe-time was getting mighty short. Whatever that shell carried, he thought, they did not seem to care whether or not they hit their own troops as well Then he saw what he had missed on his first and higher pass: a Soviet tank sat astraddle a point where several muddy tracks converged. Its turret gun was pointed in the direction of the hills off Teleman’s starboard wing and he could plainly see two mortar emplacements concealed by its bulk. The powerful glasses showed figures clad in green Soviet uniforms, some with white snow coverings, scattered like dropped firewood. The turret hatch on the tank was open and he could see a body, half in, half out. Other troopers lying on the ground were twisted into grotesque postures, some still jerking spasmodically.